Laser intended for Mars used to detect 'honey laundering'

The counterfeit goods trade might more commonly be associated
with handbags and watches, but it turns out that the world of honey
trading is also a murky one, riddled with smuggling and fakery.

According to a Food
Safety News investigation, more than a third of honey
consumed in the US has been smuggled from China and may be tainted
with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals. To make matters worse,
some honey brokers create counterfeit honey using a small amount of
real honey, bulked up with sugar, malt sweeteners, corn or rice
syrup, jaggery (a type of unrefined sugar) and other additives --
known as honey laundering. This honey is often mislabelled and sold
on as legitimate, unadulterated honey in places such as Europe and
the US.

The device has small, highly accurate lasers designed to be sent
to space to look for trace amounts of gas in very small samples.
The laser has an adjustable optical frequency or "colour" that can
be beamed at a gas sample. The frequency can be adjusted until you
reach a certain frequency that is specific to a particular gas, and
the light is then partially blocked.

"Each molecule, and each of its isotopic forms, has a unique
fingerprint spectrum. If, on the other hand, you know what you are
looking for, you can simply set the laser to the appropriate
frequency," explained Damien Weidmann, Laser Spectroscopy Team
Leader at RAL Space.

The relative levels of different isotopes can reveal information
about the history of the formation of the molecule. Weidmann is
keen to use the system to examine the methane in the Martian
atmosphere, looking at the ratios of carbon isotopes to identify
its origin. A bacterial origin would indicate life had occurred on
Mars.

The same tool can be used to scan the carbon dioxide released
from burning a few milligrams of honey to see whether it is a cheap
substitute or not. Weidmann explains: "You take a food sample
-- a few milligrams of olive oil, chocolate, wheat or whatever --
and you burn. As the sample burns, it releases carbon dioxide you
test with the laser instrument."

RAL Space has teamed up with UK company Protium MS to develop a small
portable device that can be used to probe for counterfeit foods --
not just honey, but also olive oil and chocolate. This will provide
a carbon isotope fingerprint that shows the product's provenance.
"You will know, in the case of olive oil, if it genuinely comes
from Sicily or if it is a counterfeited fake," adds
Weidmann.

David Bell, director of Protium, explains that honey is a
"classic example" because "it's an expensive product to buy, but
you can create a counterfeit product that looks very similar using
sugar instead of bees." Laser analysis of this sort can match the
honey to the flowers of a specific geographic region.

Bell believes that, as lasers become smaller and lighter, this
mechanism will be used more in the future to test food health and
safety. "The tests can help identify the geographical origin of
food products and identify counterfeits with high accuracy,"
Bell concludes.